Dieter Kurtenbach: Andrew McCutchen gives Giants something much more important than runs

By Dieter Kurtenbach, Bay Area News Group

Tuesday, January 16, 2018

New Giants outfielder Andrew McCutchen is expected to have a rock-solid debut season in San Francisco.

According to Fangraphs’ two live projections, McCutchen should provide the Giants right around three wins in 2018 behind a .270 batting average and .735 OPS.

Not bad.

But not game-changing, either.

No one can say that the Giants acquired the Andrew McCutchen that won the 2013 National League MVP award went they swung a trade with the Pittsburgh Pirates on Monday. McCutchen is still a good player and he represents a massive upgrade to the Giants’ Opening Day lineup, but he — like Evan Longoria, who was acquired last month to fill a glaring hole at third base — is not someone who is going to produce so much in 2018 that, suddenly, San Francisco a will be a real threat to the Dodgers in the National League West. And combined, the two new Giants’ productions aren’t enough to get San Francisco over the hump, either.

But listening to the Giants brass — grand poobah Brian Sabean, general manager Bobby Evans, and manager Bruce Bochy — speak on McCutchen’s introductory conference call Tuesday, you couldn’t ignore the excitement in all of their voices. I had not heard them like that in a year. It was a bit jarring. It almost seemed disproportionate. I know he’s good, but he’s not that good, guys.

Then it hit me: Yes, any team would be happy to add a player like McCutchen to their lineup — particularly one that lost 98 games last year and desperately needed an outfielder — but for this Giants team, McCutchen represents something larger than a projected 80 runs, and 20-plus homers: He represents hope.

Going into the 2018 offseason, the Giants organization was fraying. The team’s season from hell in 2017 was highlighted by deteriorating play on the field, tensions in the locker room, and a front office and manager who knew that if something wasn’t done to turn around the Giants fortunes in 2018, they probably wouldn’t be around to fix things in 2019.

And when the team struck out on trading for Giancarlo Staton and signing Shohei Ohtani earlier this offseason, spirits dipped a bit lower.

Longoria was a pick-me-up — a little hit of positivity before Christmas — but he, alone, wasn’t enough to change San Francisco’s 2018 fortunes. He was an improvement, no doubt, but the Giants needed more than that. Plus, Longoria seemed a bit overwhelmed — excited but dazed — by his trade and the fact that he wouldn’t be playing in Tampa Bay anymore.

Pairing McCutchen with Longoria is good for six, perhaps seven additional wins in 2018, if you’re looking strictly at production, but adding a clubhouse presence like McCutchen could result in more than just a few more victories.

The Giants new right fielder — that was announced Tuesday — has a reputation for being one of the best people in baseball. I have honestly never heard a foul word said about McCutchen by a baseball person. He’s revered in the industry because he’s smart, he’s personable, he brings his best to the field every day (even if he’s nowhere near 100 percent), and while he demands excellence from everyone on his team, it doesn’t feel like he’s ordering it.

It’s no coincidence that the Pirates had their best season in 16 years when McCutchen entered his prime in 2013. They say that a rising tide raises all ships and it seems as if McCutchen has the ability to control the tides.

The Giants locker room didn’t totally fracture last year — that’s an accomplishment — but it did show some cracks. The leadership in that room is strong — you don’t win three World Series titles without strong leadership — but it’s generally quiet leadership, and it was never tested like it was last year. Buster Posey isn’t a politician. We all know Madison Bumgarner isn’t either. Those are guys who try to lead by example. Nothing wrong with that at all, but in tough situations, sometimes you need a rah-rah guy, and Hunter Pence, who is usually that guy for the Giants, wasn’t able to fill that role singlehandedly last year — injuries zapped too much of his mojo over the last few years, it seemed. Eventually, he too succumbed the doldrums of a season that was going nowhere.

I’d venture to say that last year, the only guy you seemed above the fray of a 98 loss season in the Giants’ locker room was Pablo Sandoval. And he could not have given a fiery “let’s go” speech in August or September. No sir.

The Giants are a team full of gamers — they live and die on every game. They’re all-in, all the time. As such, they’ve ridden the highs of winning to three titles — the Giants were rarely, if ever, the “better” team during those playoff rounds, but they knew how to ride the waves. But when you lose as much as the Giants did last year, and you don’t have much practice at that sort of thing, the natural negative momentum of failure grows at an exponential rate.

The bad energy around the Giants was undeniable last season, and if it carried over into the 2018 season, it would have taken a lot of people down with it.

Now pride could have created some positive momentum ahead of the 2018 season, but what the Giants really needed was new blood and someone who could re-set the culture of the team.

This might come across as a cliche — I feel lame for writing it — but McCutchen — the way he plays, the way he carries himself — has always been a Giant. He’s baseball’s preeminent gamer, and now he’s a member of baseball’s preeminent gamer team.

McCutchen’s production gives the Giants a plausible shot at the playoffs — the playoffs were a pipe dream for the Giants on Sunday — and I think his leadership and fit with this Giants team could be that trademark little extra something that gets the Giants over the top this year.

You can hear it in McCutchen’s voice, too — he’s here to win. Everyone says that when they join a new team, but when McCutchen said it Tuesday, damned if I didn’t believe him. I was warned that this is not a guy who hands out empty platitudes, after all. He says what he means, and he means business.

That’s why Bochy was downright chipper on the phone Tuesday. That’s why Evans said that the Giants players relayed, via text message to him, that they over the moon with the acquisition.

The Giants aren’t going to win the National League West this year — the Dodgers are just too good to believe that’s possible — but with their two big offseason additions, they now have a team that’s good enough to hang around .500 for the majority of the season, and that makes them a playoff contender in this era of baseball.

And with McCutchen in this Giants clubhouse, I can’t help but think the Giants, a year after being downright depressing to be around, are going to enter the 2018 season with the belief — the honest, down-to-their-bones belief — that they can make some noise in 2018.

If that alone is not worth giving up a couple of prospects, I don’t know what is.